Tag Archives: Music

Shameless plug for the music choral group that I sing in. If you’re in the Santa Fe, NM area on the 17th, please come. It’s going to be a great concert. Even if you’re not an early music aficionado, these pieces are quite accessible and you will undoubtedly be familiar with two of them – Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye (aka When Johnny Comes Marching Home) and Jerusalem.

You may not realize just how bad this drought is… Santa Fe now joins the list of towns in New Mexico that are running out of water. Local reservoirs are only at 33% capacity and after McNichols and McClure are tapped out, they’ll have to go to underground aquifers. Pray for rain, guys, and pray hard.

Extreme drought is also in its third year in Magdalena, where the water is trickling back but only trickling enough to re-open town for now.

Have you noticed a lot of people here that have Michigan ties? I wonder if the load officers at CUANM do. The New Mexico Credit Union Assn. of New Mexico teamed up with a Troy, MI firm to release a mobile arcade game called Kirby’s Catch and Save, that features a kangaroo that catches coins in its pocket.

The Legal Tender in Lamy is re-opened this week. You can see a video from opening night here. To start out, they will only be open for dinner, Thursday through Saturday. Happy hour goes from 3-5pm and dinner goes from 6-9pm. Here’s the info:

HOURS & RESERVATIONS

According to the US Department of Energy, “Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos) is at some risk of seismic events and susceptible to forest fires, including those started by lightning. Since 2000, there have been two major forest fires that threatened Los Alamos.Although Los Alamos had made progress in upgrading existing nuclear facilities, concerns remained regarding the mitigation of risks related to natural disasters. Specifically, we found seismic issues affecting the Plutonium Facility that remain to be addressed. Additionally, we found that fire protection and prevention vulnerabilities in Area G Waste Storage and Disposal Facility (Area G) continue to exist. Further, we found that several known risks exist with compensatory measures implemented in Area G that may lessen their efficacy in mitigating natural disasters. Los Alamos’ processes and procedures have not always been fully effective in ensuring that hazards, including natural disasters, are fully analyzed and effectively mitigated. ”
If it weren’t the Energy Department, one would find this piece of news to be alarmist, not just alarming. But it is from the government agency and more than a bit frightening.

The Hepatitis A outbreak, blamed on Townsend Farms Organic Anti-oxidant Blend, has now affected 122 people, including 5 here in New Mexico.

Apparently, the Opera isn’t enough to keep people living here. “Not only does Albuquerque lead the nation in losing jobs, it’s also one of the leaders when it comes to losing people, as in people moving away. It’s a double whammy haunting the state’s deeply troubled economy.” It’s more than job loss, though – people are even leaving to retire. Record number of people moving away from Albuquerque.

New Mexico ranked number 8 in the top ten solar states, based on solar incentives; utility policies; interconnection; and net metering. Interesting that 4 of the top 5 were all eastern ones. Didn’t see that coming.

OK, so putting this in the New Mexico post is a bit of a stretch but the question was posed to Outside by someone in Santa Fe and I’m sitting in Hillside Market Cafe again, so there ya go. Q: How much caffeine is too much?

Megafires seem to be expected in NM. “Scientists studying a prolonged and severe drought in the southwestern U.S. say that extensive damage done to trees in that region portends what lies in store as other forests worldwide face rising temperatures, diminished rainfall, and devastating fires.” — Megadrought in U.S. Southwest: A Bad Omen for Forests Globally (Hat tip Jim O’Donnell)

Shameless plug here, folks. One of the choirs in which I sing, The Cantu Spiritus Chamber Choir, will be performing on Sunday, June 16th at 3:00 pm. We are sharing the concert with the ever-popular Santa Fe Men’s Camerata, so it’s a bargain for you – two concerts in one!

Cantu Spiritus performs chamber works from the late Medieval to the Modern Era with emphasis on the polyphonic works of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Needless to say, you won’t hear these pieces on the radio, except for your local classical station. But that makes it even more special, right? Can I get an Ahhhmeeeennnn?

Please join us at United Church of Santa Fe (across from CHRISTUS St. Vincent’s Hospital). We’d love to have you. Tickets are $20 (students under 18, free).

Another Thursday at The Legal Tender and a whole contingent of SAR (Search & Rescue) friends were there. Buffalo Nickel Two was there, as usual, but our friends had a visitor in tow and she is a wonderful singer. There should be some more videos coming but I’ll share this iPhone one because Suzy has such an awesome voice. Come back and visit soon, Suzy!

I’ve been posting a daily Christmas song over on the Facebook page (come Like us!). Beginning with the 8th of December, there will be two songs daily – one for for Christmas and one for Chanukah. As you may have noticed, my tastes are pretty eclectic, so don’t expect to see any Bing Crosby’s White Christmas (OK, I know Bing’s on the list once, but it’s not what you expect).

Rather than making you scroll through the other FB posts to find ones you missed, I thought I’d archive them on a page here. So, if you feel a need to while away some time playing YouTube videos, they’re all in one place for you to play catch up: https://theredelm.wordpress.com/holiday-music-2012/

Those of you who have worked virtual ops with me this summer know that one of my guilty pleasures is heading out for a couple of hours for a nice dinner and some great music by Buffalo Nickel at The Legal Tender in Lamy.

If you haven’t been to The Legal Tender, it’s really quite the piece of history. It’s the original hotel by the rail station, that has reincarnated into a railroad museum, restaurant, and a charity bookstore (though, as much of a biblioholic as I am, I’ve yet to figure out where the store is). With the exception of the kitchen staff, everyone who works there is a volunteer, though, they do get tips – so be generous when you go, please. They are awesome folks. Every Thursday night, Tina Carr, who owns Eldorado Country Pet, teaches either two-step, waltz, or line dancing.

Another cool thing that happens is the occasional historical reenactment. I’m pretty sure many of these are reenactments of things that didn’t happen there but call me on it if I’m wrong. For instance, the Pony Express didn’t go through New Mexico, to my knowledge. Wild Bill Hickok was shot in a saloon in Deadwood, not Lamy. That said, it’s entertaining to have folks do stuff like that. But, Mar, what about Clay Walker? I’m getting there.

So, the Wild Bill shooting happened a couple of months ago. That there dude with the big mustache is Wild Bill, played by Thadd Turner. Thadd, who had the terrible misfortune of getting shot in the head just moments later, is also the Producer and Co-Founder of Turnstone Entertainment in Santa Fe and he directed and produced Clay Walker’s Jesse James video. Betcha ya thought I’d never get there, huh?

Last night, after awesome music and the waltz lessons for the night, Brian McLane fired up a laptop and projector and Thadd showed us the new video, as well as a making-of video that he had produced. It was a real treat to see the Lamy Church used in the video and the insides of the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid. If you can’t place Madrid, it’s also where Wild Hogs was filmed. I’ll leave any value judgements to you on that event. It is also the case that Thadd, once again, got shot to death. He seems to do that a lot. I’m not sure if that means that secretly he’s a zombie or something. I guess we’ll wait for Halloween to see what he does.

I grew up in a family that had season tickets to both stock theatre and the symphony. I am closer to the older crowd mentioned in this excerpt, as far as taste. However, I’m not so sure it’s an age factor, so much as not really caring for dissonance in music. I listen for relaxation, not for innovation. Either way, it is devastating to see symphonies go under, financially.

The problems are easy to identify: The recession has pummeled charitable giving and endowments, while the audience has continued to age. Many large orchestras have been juggling high operating costs and diminishing revenues for years, so they were especially vulnerable to the downturn. Local governments and benefactors, under pressure of their own, are less able to save the day.

So what will? A crisis can sometimes be an incubator for innovation, but some observers worry that there’s a lack of bold new ideas — and that without them, many city and regional orchestras are simply doomed.

“All the data tells us all new audiences are looking for different things,” said Jesse Rosen, the president and CEO of the League of American Orchestras, the industry’s leading advocacy group outside of musicians’ unions, who hopes orchestras use this period to make sweeping positive changes.

“The appetite for classical music remains as strong as ever,” he said. “[But] the desire for it is expressing itself in different ways besides people buying tickets. So how do we adapt to the generations coming up? The problem isn’t in the music, but how to be responsive.

“The audience now is segmented; you still have a large core of subscription seasons of people who are older and like things never to change,” said Rosen, while younger audiences are more willing to watch YouTube videos of symphonies.